Hey,

I'm interested in upgrading to 10.6. I have a fully functional 10.5.8 running on my hardware. I've seen several guides including some that specifically use my motherboard and similar video card (8000 series). I have a couple of questions regarding the upgrade process.

1) The biggest thing holding me back from upgrading to 10.6 is fear of having to re-install and re-configure all my applications. I don't want to go through this. It took me nearly a week to do it when I first installed 10.5.7. Mind you I know what I'm doing a bit better now, but still, it will be a significant amount of time and work required. So when I install 10.6 will it copy all of my applications currently installed, and their configurations to the new install? Or will I have to re-install and re-configure everything again?

2) In all the guides it says I need to have a spare hdd that I can use to install 10.6 onto. Is this truly necessary? I have 10.5.8 running on a 250GB drive, single partition. Can I partition some of the free space off and install 10.6 onto that and once it's running and tested, remove the 10.5.8 partition and then add the unused space onto the new 10.6 partition?

3) Why do I need to do like the guides say and install it on a separate drive? Why can't I just upgrade my 10.5.8 to 10.6 like normal Mac users can? Insert the disc and run the upgrade process.

I know there might be simple answers to all these questions, but through my searching I haven't found any answers, and none of the guides explain why things need to be done that way, or if my applications and settings will be moved over from my 10.5.8 install to the new 10.6 install.

The main reasons I want to move to 10.6 is the improved multi-core handling (GCD), 64-bit processing, and increased memory capacity.

Thanks for any help in advance!

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